The Secrets of Pain mw-11

by Phil Rickman

  ‘To be honest, so much has happened since that until you mentioned Danny I’d kind of forgotten about it.’

  ‘If you’ve got Danny’s mobile, give him a call.’

  ‘I’ll do it now.’

  But when Lol brought out his phone it was playing the riff from ‘Sunny Days’.

  ‘Lol? That you, man?’

  ‘Eirion?’

  ‘I’ve been everywhere,’ Eirion said. ‘Left messages. She doesn’t do this. I mean, you never know which way she’s going to jump, but she doesn’t stand you up. You know?’

  ‘Jane?’

  70

  Pot… Kettle… Black

  Annie Howe – you thought you knew how she was wired, but now it was as if something in the system had gone awry. This normally emotionless woman pinched and twisted by some painful, insistent electricity. She’d had a shock and she was still getting aftershocks. Her questions were fluid and focused but some of them seemed disconnected and illogical, and somehow not…

  … not police questions.

  Merrily drank a second cup of coffee – too much, but she needed to be on top of this.

  ‘I can’t quite believe what you’re implying,’ Sollers Bull said. ‘You really think I’ve been serving up pedigree livestock for some kind of ritual slaughter?’

  ‘Somebody has, Mr Bull.’

  ‘We’re not talking about halal?’

  ‘We’re not talking about halal.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should be looking at rustlers rather than poor bloody farmers. That hidden heap of uninvestigated crimes in the countryside.’

  Sollers was on his feet, leaning back against the Aga’s chromium bar. Annie Howe sitting next to Merrily at the table, the long coat hanging open.

  ‘Do you know Kenny Mostyn, Mr Bull?’

  ‘I’ve bought items from his shops.’

  ‘What kind of items?’

  ‘Guns. A shotgun for me, an airgun for my son.’

  ‘How old’s your son?’

  ‘Were you thinking you might want to arrest him, Annie?’

  Annie. That was it. That small county thing again. Howe and Sollers Bull knew each other socially, but how well? Had it ever been more? They were around the same age.

  Howe looked down at the table, her white-blonde hair turning rose-gold in the kitchen light. Then she looked up slowly.

  ‘The woman who was leaving as we arrived…’

  ‘A neighbour. Collecting for a local charity.’

  ‘So soon after your brother’s murder? She must’ve been keen.’ Annie pushing a straying strand of hair behind an ear. ‘Mr Jones’s peculiar religion… did you know about that, Mr Bull?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does it surprise you?’

  ‘Nothing like that surprises me. Country areas are full of eccentrics who think they can get away with whatever they’re doing more easily out here.’

  ‘How did you feel when your brother sold the top field to Magnis Berries?’

  Sollers blinked, then expelled an impatient breath, shaking his head as if he found the question meaningless. Annie Howe didn’t move.

  ‘You don’t have to answer any of my questions, Mr Bull, but-’

  ‘But it might look suspicious if I don’t? For God’s sake, Annie, I’ve cooperated fully from day one. I’ve given you a DNA swab for elimination purposes, I’ve explained exactly where I was when my brother was killed and who was with me…’ Sollers upturned his head, bit his lip, sniffed, looked back at Howe. ‘All right, I don’t like selling ground, and I did not understand why my brother had done so.’

  ‘You took it up with him.’

  ‘Of course I did. He was my brother.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He glossed over it. He’d actually bought that land some twenty years ago from a neighbour, and he said he’d never really felt it was part of the farm, so when he was offered a good price he chose to get rid of it.’

  ‘And that satisfied you?’

  ‘Look, my brother and I were different people. His kind of farming was more of its time… instinctive…’

  Merrily said, ‘What does that mean, Mr Bull?’

  ‘He’d often follow his feelings rather than agricultural economics. Farming was in his blood. He used to laugh at my business degree – in a good-natured way, I should add.’

  ‘Was he superstitious?’

  ‘What a ridiculous question.’

  Annie Howe said, ‘Is it possible that your brother supplied bulls to Mr Jones?’

  ‘As for that suggestion-’

  ‘But he did keep Herefords.’

  ‘You know he did. What are you doing, Chief Inspector – trying to prove in front of your subordinate that us being old friends in no way prejudices your inquiries?’

  ‘We were friends of friends,’ Annie Howe said. ‘That was all.’

  Subordinate. Merrily smiled. At least it showed that Sollers had no idea who she was. She turned the smile on him.

  ‘The boss doesn’t have anything to prove to me, Mr Bull.’

  A faintly amused twitch at the corner of Annie’s mouth, but it didn’t last.

  ‘You feel happier now about your neighbours, Mr Bull? Magnis Berries?’

  ‘And I certainly don’t see how that -’

  ‘I’m told you’ve been a regular visitor. In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘I like to keep an open mind about these things,’ Sollers said.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Polytunnels. Much condemned.’

  Howe nodded.

  ‘And the migrant workers? You suggested to my colleague, DI Bliss, that migrant workers might be at least partly responsible for the increase in rural crime.’

  ‘I was saying all kind of things that night. I’d just seen my brother’s butchered body. And I’m sure your colleague exaggerated my comments.’

  ‘We’ll come back to that, if you don’t mind. How well do you know Ward Savitch?’

  ‘We’re acquainted.’

  ‘What do you think of him?’

  Another odd question.

  ‘I’m just interested,’ Annie Howe said.

  ‘He’s just a rich man in search of an identity. Wants to recreate the countryside as somewhere that makes him feel welcome. Lots of them around, in the so-called New Cotswolds, some of them TV celebs, like Smiffy Gill. And now they have an official voice.’

  ‘Countryside Defiance.’

  ‘Ostensibly the voice of the local people. In fact financed and run by incomers for incomers. I believe it began as a kind of business-class social networking site on the Internet. Then various resources got pooled, and they were away. Good luck to them.’

  ‘But you’re their figurehead, and you’re not an incomer.’

  Sollers bent forward, ear stud winking.

  ‘I’m their much-prized well-known local person, who can get them into both grass-roots farming circles and hunt balls.’

  ‘And what’s in it for you?’

  ‘I don’t like being treated like a suspect, Annie.’

  ‘This is really not how I talk to a suspect, Mr Bull, but if that’s how you want to-’

  ‘Some of us need incomers. They buy meat from my farm shop, they eat in my restaurant…’

  ‘And I suppose it means you get to dictate some of Countryside Defiance’s policies?’

  ‘Don’t like the word dictate. They listen to me.’

  ‘Influence, then. The campaign against rural policing, for example?’

  ‘The campaign for rural policing.’

  ‘Which particularly targets DI Bliss.’

  Sollers snorted.

  ‘Man’s a liability, as I’m sure your masters are beginning to realize. A crass little man, who was particularly insensitive on the night my brother died.’

  ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘Because he’s in the wrong place. Because he has no sympathy with country people.’

  ‘Especially,’ Annie Howe said, ‘when they’re s
hagging his wife.’

  Merrily knocked her cup over.

  Annie Howe said, ‘That was Mrs Bliss, wasn’t it, on her way out as we arrived? The woman you identified as a neighbour. Not exactly a close neighbour. Well, in a manner of-’

  ‘Don’t you fucking sneer at me, Annie. Kirsty and I… we’ve known each other many years, long before her marriage to that…’

  ‘Oik?’

  ‘… which had turned sour long before she and I got together again.’

  ‘And your wife…?’

  ‘My wife knows. We’ve had separate lives for some time, but we’re being responsible about it. We’ll stay married until the children leave home.’

  Merrily righted her cup, pulled out a tissue to mop up the coffee. Bloody hell.

  ‘And Kirsty’s family also know,’ Sollers said, relaxed again now. ‘And approve. Everyone who needs to know knows… except, presumably, for Bliss.’

  Annie Howe said nothing, but something in her face quite visibly flinched.

  ‘Too busy hiding his own indiscretions,’ Sollers said.

  Annie Howe had started to say something. It appeared to catch in her throat. For a moment she looked almost nauseous, and maybe Sollers glimpsed that, too; he slid lithely away from the stove, switched on more lights.

  ‘My information is that a physical relationship between serving police officers in the same division is normally frowned upon to the extent that, should it become known about, one of the officers is immediately put on the transfer list. Who would you rather left Hereford, Annie: Bliss, or-’

  ‘I think you should consider…’ Annie Howe’s voice cold, even for her ‘… very carefully before you continue.’

  The lights were unhealthily bright, halogen hell. Sollers dragged out a chair and sat down directly opposite them.

  ‘Bliss?’ he said. ‘Or Sergeant Dowell?’

  Annie Howe was motionless.

  ‘Pot… kettle… black,’ Sollers said.

  ‘You have any proof of this, Mr Bull?’

  ‘Mrs Bliss has been aware of it for quite some time. And she should know, don’t you think?’

  Annie was silent for a couple of seconds.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quite slowly. ‘She should know.’

  ‘And all this,’ Sollers said, ‘relates to the murder of my brother how?’

  ‘Did your brother know?’

  No hesitation from Annie. In the pink light, Sollers Bull’s face froze for just an instant.

  ‘Your brother,’ Annie said. ‘Did he know about the resumption of your friendship with Mrs Bliss?’

  ‘My brother and I didn’t discuss social life. We moved in different circles. And you know what, Annie? I’m not putting up with this any longer. I’m going to ask you to leave.’

  ‘ Did your brother know?’

  ‘Get out,’ Sollers said.

  Annie Howe drove the Audi back up the track with the headlights on full beam, took the left at a fork, let the car crawl up to the stone gateposts and a cracked sandstone sign.

  OLDCASTLE

  The metal gate to the drive was closed, no lights. Rearing beyond it, the house looked to Merrily like a derelict nursing home: three storeys, a flat sheen of moonlight like tin plate on its highest windows.

  Annie Howe flashed the Audi’s headlights at the gates and waited, lowering her window as a uniformed policeman emerged from a smaller gate to the side of the main entrance.

  ‘Don’t bother with the big gates, George, I’ll leave the car out here.’

  ‘Ma’am, you do know they’re looking for you?’

  ‘I can imagine. I’m not here.’

  ‘Bad night, Ma’am.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I never trust a full moon,’ George said.

  ‘Nonsense.’ Howe turned to Merrily. ‘You spare me another hour?’

  ‘You had a phone call. Before you started talking to Sollers Bull.’

  Annie Howe pushed her hair back.

  ‘Yes. I had a phone call.’ She parked to the left of the gates, leaving the engine running. ‘The woman Bliss was looking for, the prime suspect in the Marinescu case… he found her.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She was attending – if not running – an illegal cockfight in the cellar of a well-known flophouse and brothel on the Plascarreg. The woman is a large, violent sociopath, and the cellar was also full of men who have no reason to love the police. For reasons known only to himself, Bliss went down there. On his own.’

  ‘Oh God…’

  ‘At 19.20, a 999 call was made by the elderly woman who owns the place. Uniform turned out in force, blocked all the entrances to the Plascarreg, caught the suspect trying to smash someone else’s car through a security fence. Five other arrests. Males.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘Bliss was found in the ring. He was taken to Hereford and then transferred to the ICU.’ Annie Howe’s face was tinted in the bitter-orange haze of the dashboard lights as the engine died. ‘They say he’s in what, in a few hours, will probably qualify as a coma.’

  Shouldering open the car door, ejecting herself into the night.

  71

  Something Insane

  It was cold now; there might even have been a frost. A stray cloud was draped like a washed-out rag over the bowl of the moon, the only lamp was in the farmyard at Oldcastle.

  ‘You haven’t got a coat?’ Annie Howe said.

  ‘It was actually quite springlike earlier on. I just jumped in the car.’

  ‘I’ve got a spare one in the boot, if you…’

  ‘Listen,’ Merrily said, ‘shouldn’t you be back in Hereford?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor.’

  Annie Howe walked away into the centre of the yard. She had a flashlight but hadn’t switched it on. The mobile incident room was parked at the top of the drive, the bulk of it concealed by an extended barn.

  The yard was far too quiet for a farm.

  ‘We had to get the livestock moved,’ Annie Howe said, ‘so forensic could spend some time in the sheds and barns. Not that they turned up anything useful.’

  The flagstones were slick underfoot as if the blood was still here, still wet. Merrily thought about those apocryphal stories where the blood from a murder never dried.

  ‘Are they going to call you, if… if there’s any change?’

  ‘Dowell’s at the hospital.’

  ‘You do know there’s no truth in what he said about Bliss and Karen Dowell?’

  Yet was it so unlikely that Frannie Bliss, in the long nights of the coldest winter for many years, would seek refuge with someone who spoke his language? Maybe why he’d been so remote lately?

  ‘Dowell has more sense,’ Annie Howe said. ‘Either Bull’s lying, or Kirsty’s got the wrong end of the stick. Not that… there necessarily is a stick.’

  The edge had gone from her voice. Drained of attitude, she looked waiflike in the moonlight. The long coat was buttoned around her throat; she sank both hands into its pockets, staring at the ground.

  ‘Jesus Christ, I thought he knew Sollers was sleeping with his wife.’

  ‘How could you know and he didn’t?’

  ‘It emerged during routine inquiries. Stagg found out. Couldn’t wait to tell me. I couldn’t imagine how Francis could fail to know about his wife’s former relationship, but you forget how secretive rural families can be. I realise now that if he had known he would’ve been very polite and distant with Sollers and unloaded the investigation on someone else long before he was ordered to.’

  ‘To give himself some space to stitch Sollers up from behind?’

  ‘You really do know him, don’t you?

  ‘I’d probably have been more help in there if I’d known what you were looking for,’ Merrily said.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone break down and confess to a serious crime. You know you’re actually getting somewhere when they start to say no comment, meaning yes, I did it, now prove it.’

  ‘Did he say no co
mment?’

  ‘He told us to get out. If he was entirely innocent he’d be determined to carry on talking until he’d convinced us of it. “Get out” means “I need time to think.”’

  Annie Howe gazed at the moon’s bevelled reflection in one of Oldcastle’s attic windows. Merrily was thinking that if this was anyone else she’d be asking if they could pray together for Frannie. Most of them would humour her.

  ‘Nobody’s allowed in to see him,’ Annie said. ‘When they are, I’ll be there.’

  ‘Good.’

  Merrily looked up at the cold-haloed moon, recalling the first time she’d met Bliss. The spiritual cleansing of a country church which had been desecrated: a crow’s entrails spread over the altar, a stench of urine. Early days for her, then, in deliverance; she’d asked if they could send a cop who might believe that what she was doing wasn’t a joke. Bliss had been a detective sergeant then, with a fullish head of ginger hair. I’m a Catholic. That all right for you?

  Merrily prayed silently, alone, eyes wide open, head still fogged with shock.

  Annie Howe said, ‘I need to get a feeling for what might have happened on the night Mansel Bull died. I think I actually need to get yours.’

  She walked away, across the flags, to a taped-off area halfway between the biggest barn and the house.

  ‘You can waste a lot of time looking for a motive. Forensics have overtaken psychology. You no longer need to show why someone did it, just that they did. Most convicted murderers come out of court in the back of the van and we still don’t know why.’

  ‘You still seemed to be presenting Sollers Bull with a selection of motives.’

  ‘Oh yes. Did Mansel know about the affair with Bliss’s wife, and how did he feel about that? He and Kirsty’s father were the biggest farmers in the area – were they friends or was there rivalry? Did Sollers want Mansel out of the way because the growing divergence of their ideas on the future of farming was threatening his plans? Was he afraid that Mansel was going to marry again, maybe this time producing offspring? And then there’s the sale of the land to Magnis Berries. Did Mansel really do it without consulting Sollers? Now – why did you ask Sollers if his brother was superstitious?’